At the turn of the 1960s, Hungarian documentaries underwent a significant paradigm shift, which had important implications for social historiography as well: documentary filmmakers turned towards documentaries with the purpose of the cognizance of (social) reality. The cinematic representation of individuals’ life events and social phenomena was complemented with an explicit desire to apply sociological methodology to filmmaking. Due to this new approach, documentaries found their way into public discourse and, through presenting social problems, often assumed a critical stance towards the current political system. According to the basic tenets of the sociological film programme, documentary filmmaking is an indispensable tool for truly understanding society. Berta examines three case studies to find out how the methodology of sociological filmmaking considers certain phenomena documentary-worthy, how certain pieces of information became documentaries, and what these stories tell us about the period. First he examines Gyula Gazdag, who strives for social cognizance by investigating and tracking pieces of news with camera in hand and creates model documentaries by unpacking single incidents into social criticism. Pál Schiffer’s gypsy-trilogy is examined to trace how the shock that his topic creates is transformed into awareness raising and cinematic analysis. Finally, he explores There are changes (Vannak változások) by the Gulyás brothers' who investigate political changes in the wake of a scandalous literary sociography, and attempt to reconstruct the social situation of a village out of local reminiscences and analytical discourse ten years after the events.

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